Cecil John Rhodes
In Cape Town, Cecil John Rhodes introduces a major figure in South Africa’s political, commercial, and colonial history. He was born in Bishop’s Stortford, England, on 5 July 1853. Health problems brought him to South Africa while he was young, where he first worked on a cotton farm in Natal. He later moved to Kimberley’s diamond fields and built partnerships that shaped the mining industry.
Rhodes founded De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1888, and the company eventually controlled 90 percent of global diamond production. From 1890 to 1896, he served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. His British South Africa Company helped extend British control across territories that became Zimbabwe and Zambia. The same imperial ambitions contributed to colonial exploitation and continue to make his legacy deeply contested.
His educational influence remains visible through the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University. Those scholarships stand beside the diamond empire and political expansion as enduring parts of his story.
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Take this page with you
The myTuur app is free, and once you are standing at a spot its story starts by itself.
Spots like this one are the stops myTuur strings into tours through Cape Town. In the app, each story begins where you stand: walk up to a spot and it starts, read it on screen or listen as you go, then follow the route to the next one.
What is myTuur?
myTuur is a free city-guide app. Its tours are built from spots, and each spot carries a story that starts when you get there, to read or to listen to as you like.